160 Mins Akira Kurosawa

shakesalltext.qxd 13/3/07 11:51 am Page 84 84 BFI SCREEN GUIDES 100 SHAKESPEARE FILMS 85 Ran Japan/France, 1985 – 160 mins Akira Kurosawa As this dazzlingly photographed transposition of King Lear unfolds on the mountain slopes and volcanic plains of Kyushu, Akira Kurosawa astonishes again with the spectacular action that earned him a Best Director Oscar nomination and made Ran, at the time, the most expensive Japanese film ever, surpassing the benchmark established by his previous sixteenth-century epic, Kagemusha (1980). What makes Ran a masterpiece, however, is the skill with which, as in Throne of Blood (1957), Kurosawa tailors Shakespeare to Japanese history and culture. He had pondered the legend of Motonari Mori, a sixteenth-century warlord whose three sons were paragons of goodness, and wondered what might have been if Mori’s children had been less virtuous. He found his answer in Shakespeare. Lear’s daughters become the three sons of warlord Hidetora, aged seventy (as was Kurosawa when he began the script): Taro is equivalent to Goneril, though lacks her implacable malice; Jiro is as ruthless as Regan and Cornwall; Saburo is the recalcitrant yet devoted Cordelia. Saburo and Tango, a Kent-like retainer, are banished for challenging Hidetora’s decision to cede power to Taro in an open-air division of the Lear and his fool: Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) and Kyoami (Peter) wander the countryside kingdom. With the rival factions colour-coordinated by Emi Wada’s as outcasts in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran Academy Award-winning costumes and hierarchically arranged in a circle, this is the first of many scenes in which, as Donald Richie points on children’s respect for elderly parents. In Japanese eyes, Taro’s out in his masterly study, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1996), Ran’s ingratitude is perhaps even more offensive than Goneril’s and it is compositions are reminiscent of the groupings of figures in Noh theatre. emulated by Jiro, who treats Hidetora with disdain at Second Castle. Parts of Toru Takemitsu’s score copy the percussion and pauses of Noh By now it has become clear that, unlike Lear, Hidetora is not ‘more music and, as Hidetora, the formidable Tatsuya Nakadai’s stylised make- sinned against than sinning’. His downfall is retribution for having spilled up is based on Noh masks. ‘an ocean of blood’ while suppressing rival families, and Kurosawa Soon after the division, Taro makes his father sign away all power at summons great pity for two of his victims: Jiro’s deeply religious wife, the immense First Castle – a humiliation utterly contrary to giri, Japan’s Sué, who watched Hidetora burn her parents alive, and her beautiful complex system of interpersonal obligations, which places great emphasis brother, Tsurumaru (an amalgamation of Edgar and Gloucester), whose shakesalltext.qxd 13/3/07 11:51 am Page 86 86 BFI SCREEN GUIDES 100 SHAKESPEARE FILMS 87 eyes were gouged out by Hidetora, and who finds some solace playing rimmed eyes, speaking more eloquently of his torment than the script, his fué (Noh flute). Though they have ample cause to see Hidetora suffer, which gives Nakadai only the briefest of speeches and when Lear’s lines their profound Buddhist faith has enabled them both to forgive, and it is are paraphrased at greater length, it is Kyoami who delivers them. Taro’s wife, Kaede, played by Mieko Harada with extraordinary, quiet Hidetora sows the seeds of the tragedy but is seldom its central figure, menace, who turns this Lear into revenge tragedy. Hidetora murdered and the Expressionistic presentation of his mental decline led Richie to her father and brother and drove her mother to suicide and, like a suggest, perceptively, that ‘he becomes a visible idea’ rather than the younger, sexier version of Asaji in Throne of Blood, she manipulates Taro ‘believable person’ created by Shakespeare. into mistreating his father and, after Jiro has had her husband killed, After the outcast pair find short-lived refuge in Tsurumaru’s hut, seduces and marries him so that she can complete Hidetora’s Kurosawa choreographs a second remarkable battle, involving 1,200 destruction. extras and 200 horses, in which Saburo’s musketeers decimate Jiro’s Yet while the King languishes in the countryside, attended by thirty cavalry. Hidetora and Saburo are briefly, movingly reunited, before a knights, a dozen concubines and his androgynous, graceful fool, Kyoami climax even more harrowing than Lear’s. Saburo is shot dead and (Peter, a transvestite singer hugely popular on Japanese television), a Hidetora dies of a broken heart. The army of a rival warlord, Ayabe happy ending remains possible. He need only follow Tango’s advice and (effectively Lear’s Burgundy), attacks First Castle. Kaede, having live with Saburo at the home of his father-in-law, Fujimaki (equivalent to engineered the beheading of Sué, is herself beheaded by Kurogane, who the King of France). Having misjudged his son so badly, however, joins Jiro in suicide. Hidetora asks Tango: ‘How could I face him?’ The Japanese obsession It falls to Tango, addressing the grieving Kyoami, to sum up the with not losing face prevents reconciliation, and this twist on the film’s view of humanity: ‘Men – they are so stupid that they believe that Lear/Cordelia relationship seals Hidetora’s fate. survival depends upon killing. No, not even the Buddha can save us.’ The Taking refuge in the Third Castle, he is attacked by his elder sons’ apocalyptic final shot – Tsurumaru helpless on the edge of a precipice, troops, and his men are wiped out in an astonishing ten-minute battle. silhouetted against the last of those morbid sunsets – underlines why We can only see, not hear, terrible carnage: men hit by musket rounds Kurosawa chose Ran as his title; it can mean ‘chaos’, ‘rebellion’ or, more and flaming arrows, Hidetora’s concubines committing sepuku. aptly for Lear and this adaptation, ‘desolation of the soul’. Takemitsu’s trumpets, strings and muffled timpani (modelled, at Kurosawa’s insistence, on Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony) are the only Dir/Editor: Akira Kurosawa; Prods: Masato Hara, Serge Silberman; Scr: Akira Kurosawa, sounds until Taro is shot in the back by Jiro’s wily lieutenant, Kurogane Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide; DOPs: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, in collaboration with (Hisashi Igawa), and the cacophony is suddenly audible. Hidetora Asakazu Nakai; Score: Toru Takemitsu; Main Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai (Hidetora Ichimonji), staggers from the burning fortress like a soul descending into hell – the Akira Terao (Taro Ichimonji), Mieko Harada (Lady Kaede), Jinpachi Nezu (Jiro Ichimonji), most potent and obvious of Ran’s many metaphorical images and sounds Yoshiko Miyazaki (Lady Sué), Daisuke Ryo (Saburo Ichimonji), Peter (Kyoami), Masayuki Yui (distant, ominous thunder in the division scene; blood-red sunsets; (Tango), Takeshi Nomura (Tsurumaru), Hitoshi Veki (Fujimaki), Hisashi Igawa (Kurogane). Hidetora lost in fog). In the Lear-like storm that follows, Nakadai’s make-up changes, the fierce visage of the opening hour gains a deeply lined forehead and red-.

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